[Elecraft] K3 Firmware 3.03 Beta AGC Settings - feature request

[K4IA at aol.com]

The observations remind me of my battles with  the Orion AGC.

Orion had AGC-F AGC-S and AGC-Prog 

All three  allowed you to set your own parameters and the AGC-Prog 
(Programmable) gave you  the option of a custom AGC setting for contests or whatever.  

K3  doesn't have that flexibility and has no Programmable AGC setting.    How 
about a Programmable AGC setting and the ability to set up your own AGC-S  
and AGC-F settings?

BTW - Orion never did get it right in my humble  opinion.

Buck
k4ia
k3#101

In a message dated 3/27/2009  8:56:47 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
egan.dennis88 at gmail.com writes:
I used my  K3 with 3.03 Beta during the Russian DX Contest last weekend.  
During  the contest, I had
the opportunity to play around with the AGC settings in  the beta 
firmware 3.03, and what seemed
optimal to me is right in line  with what Dave K6LL recommended.

First Choice:  AGC Off, RF gain  between 10AM and 2PM, depending on 
incoming signal strength.
This  provided the cleanest reception of all signals.  While strong 
signals  did occasionally blast me out,
I was still able to hear very weak signals  with no problems.  Using the 
RF gain control, I was also able
to  thin out most pile-ups, then bring up the RF gain to work the weaker 
signals  in the pile-up.  I spent
a lot of time last weekend operating on 14.007  and 7.008.

Second Choice: AGC Fast with the following AGC parameters  set:
AGC DCY:  Soft
AGC Hld:    .30
AGC  PLS:   Off
AGC SLP:    0
AGC THR:    8
AGC F     : 120
AGC S     :  20
The new firmware AGC settings were almost as good as AGC Off, but not  
quite, and these settings
did not reduce the need to turn the RF Gain  down.  On the same 
frequencies above, turning the AGC
to Fast would  raise the background noise level and IMD level just a tad; 
signals were not  quite as clean
as with AGC off, but it was a definite improvement over  firmware 2.82.  
For the casual op, these settings
would probably  work well.

I also agree with Dave that the most important thing is to  keep the RF 
gain control down.  That's a good
rule of thumb for any  radio, not just the K3.    

Dennis  W1UE
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